Video of the Day 012 "we're not the customer, we're the product"

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The Terrifying Cost of "Free” Websites

What?

An inside look behind the most popular social media platform as well as the most widely used internet platform that has far reaching tentacles.

Who?

Facebook in particular and Google in broader sense have to derive from the predicament of people wanting to use their services without paying them any money in the only way they can: selling off information of their users to advertisers that are willing to pay for them.

How?

Handling and managing these multi-billion platform and service require a huge amount of money to be able to run as smoothly as people are now used to, people's tendency to favor a free product instead of paying for them in turns would force the providers of said products to have their main source of income at the expense of their own customers' now public privacy.

Why?

The user term agreement every user have to accept being able to log in would be the only legal binding that allow for such actions by them and although they should be aware and careful of giving away their own personal information, the current culture of oversharing really push them to be self-indulgent and just share every facet of their life without any prior worry how they are used.

Then?

With the synchronization of their accounts now with its area of effect going more widespread as ever as more and more of them prefer to have only one account to be used all across the internet, every action they take would be recorded to ensure they received advertisements that fit the online behaviors the most.

So?

By knowing the full extent of how your own information is being sold to cater to the big advertisement companies, it should at least make you second-guessed yourself when filling in your own private information in the social platform for all the world to see and used to their own gain.

Lesson Learned:

Nothing is free. Everything have a cost.

source: College Humour